


It's The Aftertaste That's Bitter

by Sotheylived



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:03:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotheylived/pseuds/Sotheylived
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma’s fully embraced the darkness and isn’t against bringing others to the dark side with her. Ficlet, post season five premiere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's The Aftertaste That's Bitter

The door swings wildly from her entrance - thrown completely off the hinges. She’s holding a heart, fingers digging into the soft, pulsing flesh. It’s not the first time he’s seen her with a heart in her hands, but it is so so different. Even when she held Merida’s heart it was different from this - this determination, this glee.

 "Emma don’t!“ Killian shouts. 

 "Don’t what?” she asks, giving the heart a gentle squeeze. Her lips curl into a malicious smile that sends a shiver down his spine. 

 "Love, this isn’t you,“ he says, feeling his own heart twinge unhappily in response - as if it’s his own heart she has clasped in her hand - he supposes in a way, it is. "Swan,” he implores, reaching out towards her but not daring take a step. 

 Though the room turned icy upon her entrance, sweat pricks his brow as he watches her, waits for her to make a decision. Her eyes drift to his outstretched fingers, gaze unreadable and so unlike his Swan. With the heart still cradled in one of her hands she moves towards him warily and reaches out to graze her cool fingertips against his palm. His lungs burn as he lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he held. 

 "Emma,“ he breathes, voice cracking and splintering on her name. Cautiously, he closes his hand around her fingers and moves to step closer to her. 

 Emma rips her hand from his grasp and is halfway across the room in an instant. "Emma’s gone,” she says, her voice taking on a pitch he’s never heard from her before and it sends a chill through him right down to his very bones. “Well actually dead would be more accurate,” she says casually and his heart, already torn apart and half-mended more times than he can count, splinters again. 

 She laughs and the sound is wrong, so so wrong. Not light and airy, but dead and flat and cold - nothing like a laugh at all really. “It’s kind of poetic when you think about it,” she says, “that both of you loves died at the hands of the Dark One - makes for a good story." 

 The door creaks and moans in the empty diner, still trying to block out the wind even though it’s beyond repair and Killian wonders idly, in a detached sort of way, if that’s why his heart is still thumping so fiercely against his ribs even as he feels it fracture and crack. 

 Emma laughs and the deranged sound shakes him to his core. With the darkness fully in control again she walks towards him and strolls in a little circle around him, fingers trailing across his chest and shoulders and so unlike the tentative Emma-like touch she’d brushed against his palm a moment ago.

 "It’s not too late to turn back to the light,” Killian says, standing still as stone as she wraps around him, “to be a hero." 

 "Mmm I think it is,” she says almost conversationally, stopping directly in front of him and squeezing the heart in her hand until it turns to black ash. 

 He doesn’t flinch, he wants her to know she doesn’t scare him - that she can do any horrible thing she wants and he will still believe there is goodness in her and try to turn her to back to the light like she did for him. He knows what she’s fighting after all. 

 "Even the smallest flame can break the blackest night,“ he says forcing himself to meet her icy stare. 

 "I don’t think a candle is the best analogy.” She leans in close and whispers, each word a puff of cool air bouncing off his lips. “More like ink spilled on paper, soaked up until the whole page is black." 

 "It’s not too late. It’s never too late,” he says pleadingly, “just look at Regina. Look at me." 

 She laughs derisively. "You think you’re a hero now, after 300 years of evil? Did you really think less than a year of good deeds would make you a hero?”

 She’s hit on his biggest insecurity and knows it - especially when he’s rendered silent by her words. 

 "You’ll be dark again soon enough,“ she says.

 "No, never,” the fight is back in his voice and he lets it carry him, his words louder and more sure than before. “I won’t become a villain. You will be a hero again Swan." 

 She taps a finger against his chin and smiles wickedly, "hmm let’s take a look at history, shall we? What happened after Liam died?” Her words shoot straight through him, as if her very words carry the power of the Dark One, the power to wound. “How about we talk about how good and light you were after Milah’s death?” She smiles at him and it’s all wrong. “What do you think will happen once you accept Emma is dead?" 

 She reaches out a hand so cold it takes all his willpower not to flinch as she caresses his face. 

 "The darkness has taken a bite out of you Killian,” her fingers sweep down to trace his jaw, “and you know what?” she asks, leaning forward so her lips are only a hair’s breadth away from his. “It likes the taste.”


End file.
